Okay, I'm ashamed. I have a 56 Buick Special 322 V8. Had it for 18 years but due to high pressure job, kids, hectic lifestyle, Ive neglected it over the past few years. Decided to give it a well deserved tune up this week. Took off all the plug wires (all corroded), cap and rotor with the intention of replacing it all. Silly me, I lost track of the firing order and where everything goes and I cant find my shop manual because I havent used it in over ten years. Pathetic. Thought maybe someone could save me here and give me the firing order, and more important the exact placement of the wires on the cap. Was hoping to get this thing running this weekend. Thank you so much.

Ok here it is.

Cylinders 1, 3, 5 and 7 are on the passenger side, and, cylinders 2, 4, 6 and 8 are on the driver side. With the distributor properly indexed in the engine the terminal for plug #3 should be at the front of the cap and the terminal for plug #8 at the back of the cap. The cap latch bales are between terminals 3 and 6 on the front and between terminals 7 and 8 on the rear. The terminal for plug 1 will be the first one to the passenger side from terminal #3. The distributor rotates clockwise. Firing order is 1 - 2 - 7 - 8 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 3.

The distributor turns clockwise. Initial spark timing is 5 degrees BTDC. No 1 cylinder is on passengers side of engine. Firing order is; 1-2-7-8-4-5-6-3.

Finding the first cylinder on the distributor is going to take a little imagination.

According to the wiring diagrams on page 10-84 and 10-85, it looks like the number one and two terminals would be on either side of the wire terminal (the small black wire from the coil) entering the distributor. The number one is the positon counter clockwise of this wire, and the number two terminal is just to the clockwise position. Of course this assumes no one has ever removed your distributor and reinstalled it rotated 180 degrees.

As for verifying this, I would recommend that you get a set of valve cover gaskets ( still available at any decent local parts store) and then remove the passengers side cover to observe the rocker arms while you rotate the engine. Obviously when both rockers are closed and you can align the timing mark on the balancer as per above, you should observe where the rotor points on the distributor. That's where you start.

One more thing, the manual shows the wires being routed a certain way under the spark plug covers. This was to prevent crossfiring of adjacent wires on consecutive cylinders. Presumably new wires would not be susceptible to this, but to avoid repetitious removal of the covers, I'd leave them off till you can get a picture of this.

Good luck